Important Announcements

Nondiscrimination Policy Update

Boston Medical Center Health System complies with applicable Federal civil rights laws and does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, color, national origin (including limited English proficiency and primary language), religion, culture, physical or mental disabilities, socioeconomic status, sex, sexual orientation and gender identity and/or expression. BMCHS provides free aids and services to people with disabilities and free language services to people whose primary language is not English.

To read our full Nondiscrimination Statement, click here.

InfoEd Proposal Routing Automation

InfoEd logo

Research Information Systems (RIS), in collaboration with Sponsored Programs Administration (SPA), is implementing a Proposal Routing solution utilizing InfoEd – BMC’s sponsored award proposal management system of record. The new functionality streamlines the proposal development process; allows proactive monitoring of compliance, review and approvals among many other benefits.

After completing successful pilots with Psychiatry and Pediatrics, RIS/SPA are in the final phase of rolling out these changes to the remaining BMC Departments utilizing InfoEds’ proposal development process. Please see below for benefits, additional detail regarding these changes, training and next steps.
 

Benefits: Current vs Future State

Current State - Manual Proposal Review/Submission

The existing proposal review and submission workflow involves manual emailing of documentation and approval chain communications. Specific challenges include:

  • Tracking the proposal lifecycle. Having to hunt for emails to see if/when an item has been reviewed or approved, unknowing of specific aspects of the review or if revisions are needed
  • Lacking transparency for stakeholders; being mindful of including all necessary parties in the email communication and kept in the loop from start to finish
  • Planning and Preparedness for new proposals in the queue for development
  • Potential security risk/email tampering

Future State - Automated Proposal Review/Submission

Implementing Routing Functionality streamlines and improves tracking across the proposal development stages by:

  • Consolidating all documentation and approval/review determinations in a central location
  • Enabling proactive monitoring of compliance/review/approvals
  • Providing transparency to stakeholders with an in-system audit trail to monitor communications and approvals regarding a proposal submission
  • Reducing the manual process of importing e-mail approvals into the application, ensuring electronic sign off has been reviewed and obtained
  • Two communication paths allowing users the flexibility of tracking the proposal lifecycle as well as allows teams to better staff in preparation for your upcoming proposal submission
  • Linking the users credentials to the approval process align with security standards at BMC and allows approvals to be marked with a single click
     

High-Level Workflow

*InfoEd Proposal Review and Submission Routing dashboard approval will replace the “I approve” email for submission sign off. 

Next Steps Detail for Departments and Users

System: InfoEd [https://infoed.bmc.org/]
Go-Live Date: 10/02/2023
Departments:  All BMC Departments utilizing InfoEd Proposal Submission 
Users: Investigators, Department Chief, Department Admins,  Foundation Relations and Government Grants, Sponsored Programs Administration, Compliance

Training

  • Training is conducted through the WorkDay eLearning module. 
    • Content: A 30 minute video series composed of lessons no longer than 4 minutes, a downloadable user guide and brief quiz at the end.
  • You will receive a notification from WorkDay once the training has been assigned to you. Note: The initial trainee list was established by working with your departments’ designated Point of Contact to determine eligibility. 
  • You should have received two notices regarding training:
    • 1. WorkDay regarding the training on 7/7 - 7/8 (subject: “Workday Inbox - Your Daily Digest “ course name:” Research Education - InfoEd Proposal Review and Submission Routing” and
    • 2. A follow-up notice from RIS on 7/12 – subject: “InfoEd Proposal Review and Submission Routing Implementation”. 
  • If you have not received these communications that means that you were either part of one of the earlier Pilot groups (Psychiatry/Pediatrics) or do not have an active BMC login.
  • Important: 
    • WorkDay training is only available and sent to those who have active BMC logins. If you do not have an active BMC login established, please coordinate with BMC HR and/or your manager to complete this step. RIS will be reaching out to this initial set of users with an interim training plan;
    • The Workday Learning Video will reflect a 30 day due date. Workday will automatically send out a weekly reminder on Wednesdays until the course is complete. Overdue notifications will be sent to managers once a week in their workday digest notifications;
    • After the Go Live >  if training is not completed prior to your proposal submission, the proposal may be denied by Sponsored Programs Administration;
    • Eligible new users going forward will be required to complete the training prior to their next proposal submission;
  • The training content will be available on-demand as a refresher that can be utilized at any time.

Contact

If you feel you have received any of the above notifications in error or have any questions/concerns, please reach out to RIS@bmc.org and grants.admin@bmc.org; RIS will also be sending a reminder as we get closer to the Go-Live date.

We would like to recognize and thank our fellow collaborators in SPA, Psychiatry, Development and Pediatrics for helping design, test and pilot this new functionality as well as the various Points of Contact across the Departments for participating in the user security audit and championing these changes as we transition to this new process.